Input/Output Devices
Input Devices An input device is an piece of hardware equipment which when plugged into a computer, provides data and control signals. Without these input devices, the computer would be a simple device and not allow users to interact with it. Computer Keyboards A keyboard is an input device is a board represented with a lot of different buttons. Each button, or key is connected to the computer, and sends a message to it every time someone press that button. Traditional keyboards used spring-based buttons but due to newer inventions, there are even virtual keys and even projected keys. Pointing Device A pointing device is a type of device which allows the user to control and provide data to the computer using physical gestures, it also allows users to input spatial data to a computer. When you move the input device, there is a shadow movement of your action reflected on the screen, creating a simple, intuitive way to navigate a computer's graphical user interface. Webcam A input device plugged to a computer hardware which allows a person anyone connected to the Internet to view still pictures or motion video of a user. Websites like AIM, MSN, Skype allow two different users or more to be connected to their webcam, and allow the others users to view through them through their webcam. These footages viewed by users are all streamed, and are updated instantly. The webcam is connected through network, ehternet or WIFI before it allows others to view the through the camera. Computer Microphones Computer microphones are a type of input device in which it allows users to input audio into their computer. When plugged to a network, ehternet or WIFI, it allows others users to be able to hear what your saying, and reply back. A perfect example of when this is used, is computer games. This allows teammates to be able to communicate easily, so everyone is on the same track. High Degree of Freedom Input Devices These type of devices are special devices plugged to a computer, these devices can be used as pointing devices, but are generally used in ways that don't involve pointing to a location in space, such as the control of a camera angle while in 3D applications. Output Devices Monitor A monitor is a screen in which it is plugged to the computer hardware, and shows images, words, numbers and graphics. Most of the movement on this monitor is commanded by an input device such as a keyboard, a webcam and even a mouse. The CRT(Cathode Ray Tube) is the main component and most extensive part within your computer monitor. This is because its the line projects the images onto the screen. Printer A printer is a device that produces a hard copy of documents stored on a computer hard drive, and usually produces on physical print media such as paper. More modern printers can even directly interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards or even capturing electronics such as digital cameras, scanners. Projector A projector is a type of hardware which enables an image, such as allowing a computer screen to be projected onto a flat surface. These are often used at meetings so everyone would be able to view what is projected on the screen, and it only requires one computer. It also shows what is on the screen at a bigger resolution when you use a projector Sound Card A sound card is also know as a sound board or audio board, and is an expansion card or integrated circuit that provides the computer the ability to produce sound that can be heard by the user either through speakers or headphones. Ports Physical Ports: A physical port allows a hardware which has to be physical to be connected to the CPU, and there ports look like holes on the computer. If you want there to be a connection between the hardware and the CPU, just plugged the appropriate wires into the correct port How many physical ports are there? There are a total of 65535 ports in a computer, but only 1024 of them are well known. But even though there are so many ports, there are only 20 ports visible to us like headphones, USB, etc. Mots of the ports are inside the hardware, unable for us to see. Motherboard What is it? A motherboard is the flat rectangular piece of circuit board which links all the devices inside the hardware computer so the computer is able to work. A motherboard is just like a connection/ "bridge" between different components of the computer. Without the motherboard, the computer would never work as the RAM would not be able to be processed to the CPU, and other commands like from the USB cannot be transfered the CPU. How do I/O devices connect to it In the motherboard, there are things called bus circuit. These circuits are just like transport bus, as they bring one information from one place to another. The speed of this process is measured by megahertz (MHz) where the faster this is, the more things it can handle at one time. Form Factor A form factor means the shape and layout of the motherboard. And this affects where different components are on the motherboard, and the size and shape where the motherboard is placed. There are different specifics for each Form factors for each PC's motherboard, different for each computer. Sizes have ranged from 12 inches (the oldest) to 170mm x 170mm (the newest) Scanner A scanner is a special device which inputs the information from hard copies, and moves it to soft copies. You can scan a photo and scan it on to your computer so that you can edit the photo. Below this, there will be explanations of what is needed to make a scanner work. OCR OCR stands for Optical Character Recoginition, is a software which translates images of handwritten work, typewritten work or painted work into machine-editable text. MICR The MICR stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, and is defined as "common machine language specification for the paper-based payment transfer system". This type of language is only used for printing the numbers at the bottom of each check, and these magnetic ink are checked by scanners to see the account of the owner, and is the check valid. The inking for the check has to be really accurate, or the scanner won't be able to view the check to see the account number. Biometrics Biometrics in our technology age is used to recognize different people's voice, fingerprints, face. They are mainly used at places with high security All Biometric devices must have these following components: *A reader or scanning device that scans the biological information *Software that converts the scanned information into digital form and compares match points *A database that stores the biometric data for comparison *They all work pretty much the same, and the good thing about these devices is that it uses your biological information to make the input device(the biometric device) in order to identify yourself so that you can access certain information. This increase security. Military, or spies (like in mission *mpossible) uses these devices to access confidential material. The bad thing is that it is really expensive =